


From Ashes

by CrypticSpren



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Angst, Book 01: The Way of Kings, Character Study, Father Figures, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:46:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28606947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrypticSpren/pseuds/CrypticSpren
Summary: Two bodies. Both covered in blood and crem. Neither older than sixteen. One of them, Tukks realised, was still alive.---------------The aftermath of Tien's death, from the perspective of Sergeant Tukks.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 56
Collections: Genuary 2021





	From Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Gore and graphic injury detail

It was a bloody one. Bloodiest Tukks had seen in a good long while. A good quarter of the lads in his unit had fallen, young and old alike.

Mostly young. 

More than that were missing, and experience told him that missing mostly meant dead. It also meant injured and going to die in a lot of cases. In some it meant injured but about to be sent home with an amputated leg or arm. In others it meant shock bad enough to leave them dazed and lost, wandering the battlefield, uncomprehending. 

Tukks was never sure which of those three fates he thought was worse. About half the time the battle shocked ones could still fight, although they never were quite the same. The injured, at least, could go home. Leave this heralds forsaken army and find peace in the life of a merchant or farmer, even the ardentia. 

The dead, of course, were free from the lot of it. 

It was bad to think like that, Tukks knew.

His wife, Enlia, young and beautiful and as weathered by this place and the man they served as he was, would scold him whenever he said anything like that. Kiss the furrow from his brow, then tell him to stop moping about and step up because those lads needed him, and so would she when the baby came. 

Even in the waning, death slicked light of a bloodbath, that thought made him smile. Storms did he love that woman.

"Sir!" The youthful voice of an unfamiliar soldier interrupted his reverie, and he looked up from his post battle routine of cleaning and polishing his gear.

"At ease, soldier," he said, and the young man let his salute fall. He looked terrible - bleeding through a bandage wrapped badly around his forearm, uniform slicked with so much blood and mud you couldn't even see what colour it was anymore. He was too old to be a messenger boy really - he'd probably been roped into the job by the sheer volume of messages that needed conveying.

"The commander of the vultures says they've found one of your lot, Sir," the man said, wavering slightly. He looked pale, blood loss. Whoever sent him off to carry messages instead of to the surgeons needed skinning. 

"Dead?" The vultures was the morbid nickname given to the unit that formed to collect, and scavenge from, the dead. A different officer took charge each time, and its soldiers were made of whoever was still strong enough to lift and carry.

"No sir, in the way apparently. They want you to come shift him." 

Well. That could mean storming anything. Heavy with it, Tukks pushed himself to his feet, leaving his spear propped against the crate he'd been sat on, "Thank you soldier. You're dismissed-" the man made to leave, but Tukks stopped him with a hand to the shoulder, " _ After  _ you get that wound of yours properly seen to. Can't have you running about catching rot spren," they'd already lost to many for this man to die of a festering wound. 

"Yes sir!" The young man said, before heading off in a direction that was decidedly  _ not  _ to the surgeons' tents. Tukks couldn't fault his nobility, even if it meant he probably wouldn't see out the month. Amaram's army was the sort of place honour was more likely to get you killed than promoted. 

"Almighty forgive us," Tukks muttered, before heading off in the direction indicated.

* * *

Tukks walked past a large pyre that smelled like cooking meat. A man couldn't think about what that burning smell really was if he wanted to stay sane, so Tukks didn't, pretended it was the smell of whatever was going in the mess, blown over on the searing breeze. His mouth watered and he felt sick. A log collapsed, sent a cascade of embers and dancing flame spren twisting up into the ash grey clouds. 

It was the very edge of the battlefield that he found them. Most of the dead had already been moved from this area, so Tukks found the gathering easily. A couple of battered looking soldiers lounged on a rock, accompanied by two slightly younger boys, one carrying an upright stretcher, bearing the armbands that marked them as temporary helpers in the surgeon's tents. Rounding them out was a disgruntled looking Luietenant Norl. 

"Sir," Tukks saluted the man, who just scowled harder, craggy face contorting with it.

"Tukks," The man snarled, "Get your mangey arse over here and get this cremling of yours shifted - he's stopping my men doing their jobs."

Tukks jogged the last few paces obligingly, coming to peer into the hollow the Lieutenant indicated.

Two bodies. Both covered in blood and crem. Neither older than sixteen. One of them, he realised, was still alive. Chest moving slightly as he clutched the other tight, almost as if he thought doing so could keep him tethered just a little longer to the mortal world. 

It couldn't, of course. 

The other boy was long since dead, staring at the dead grey sky, rotspren swarming him already. Tukks' attention was held only by the first though, as recognition sparked within him. 

It was Kal, one of the youngest in his unit, too young for this, really. He was bright and keen to learn all he could, and whilst he'd been hobbled with the typical awkwardness of a solitary and bookish boyhood, he'd been starting to come out of his shell a little and bond with the other lads his age. 

How much of that gawkish, gangly teenager would be left after this? Not much by Tukks' reckoning. 

"Storms," he muttered, getting to his knees, and crawling closer to the boy, "Kal, lad?" he said, reaching out to give his shoulder a shake. The boy simply clutched the other tighter to him as he stared, unseeing, at some point well beyond Tukks. 

The lad had talked, at length, about his brother who'd been signed on as a messenger boy. This body, this child's body, would probably be the brother. Tukks felt his heart, that organ he'd long since thought to have been put through so much abuse as to have been rendered entirely numb, break just a little more at that. 

"Can you hear me Kal?" he said, refusing to be dissuaded. He couldn't tell if the boy did or not, but Tukks barrelled on anyway, resting a hand on the lad's arm, "I'm gonna need you to let go of him."

He didn't, clutched the younger boy's stiff body tighter. The silence crashed in Tukks ears like steel, he'd take a million battles with the spear if it meant he didn't have to fight this one with this scared, broken child. 

Tukks hadn't wanted to be tough, had wanted to be kind, but it seemed like harshness would be the better solution here, "Come on soldier, on your feet. You've work to do." 

That elicited a low whine. The noise seemed to bubble from some awful, animal place within the boy, more like an injured axehound than a sound a human could make. 

Tukks could feel Norl's glower on the back of his neck, urging him along. Storm that. If the man couldn't wait, Tukks was tempted to draw this whole thing out even longer just to spite him. 

That thought died as his eyes fell back on Kal. Shock, cold, exhaustion - his wounded leg seemed the least of it. He needed to get the boy some place warm and away from his brother's body. Before it all set in too deep to ever be properly scraped out. 

He reached his decision quickly. 

"You ain't gonna like this lad," he said, close to an apology as he would likely ever get with one of his men, then gripped him under the armpits and pulled.

The boy struggled briefly, trying to twist free, moaning something that started with a T through loose, chattering lips. After a moment though, he sagged, limp, staring. Empty as a sphere gone dunn. 

Tukks groaned, staggering under the weight. He was a skinny one, lean in the way that clung to a person's bones after they'd starved too long too young, as if even his body expected nourishment to be taken away at the last possible moment. It didn't make him any lighter though, and Tukks struggled under the weight, which seemed to mostly be height.

"You!" he yelled at the boys with the stretcher. They jumped to action in fright, rushing over and laying the canvas on the stone. With some difficulty, Tukks managed to get the kid laid down on it, still staring at nothing. Lad might as well have been dead himself for all the difference it made.

After a little prompting, the two boys lifted him up, and Tukks gave them a parting word, "Make sure you tell them surgeons that they'd better treat him as proper as any lighteyed bastard or they'll have me to answer to." the boys nodded, then quickly hurried away with the stretcher. Soon after, the two men who'd been waiting swept down on the remaining body. 

The dead boy didn't get a stretcher. His limbs had long gone stiff with the rigor, skin drained of sinking blood, dark brown eyes filmy with death. They almost looked tan, like this. The child wouldn't care, of course, that he was alone as his body was heaved atop the nearest pyre. That there'd be no one who properly cared for him there to see him off. 

Damnation though, Tukks cared. Hated that he cared as he strode towards the pyre and settled down atop an outcropping, heat from the death fire warming his skin. 

He didn't notice Norl coming to stand beside him, not until he heard the crackle of the other man rubbing moss between his fingers, smelled it, "What're you still doing here? Get yourself back to camp where it's warm. All's here is more crem." Norl inhaled deeply, head tilted slightly back.

Tukks couldn't help the frown at that, "That stuff'll kill you Norl." he said dryly.

"Amaram's storming war'll get us all first," was his reply as he flicked the last of the burnt up plant into the flames, "You didn't answer my question." 

"I'm not leaving a kid to burn alone - not when the only person that gave one just got carted off." 

Norl scoffed and shook his head, "That's what'll kill you, Tukks - caring too storming much. Much more hazardous than any moss habit. Maybe you should get one to wean you off those there feelings." 

"If you want to tell my man that I left his kid brother alone in a pyre go right ahead Norl, otherwise storm off." 

Norl did just that, leaving Tukks alone to watch a child whose name he didn't know burn. 

* * *

It was well into darkness by the time Tukks made his way to the infirmary. The place was a mess. There were never enough surgeons attached to Amaram's army, and when there were surgeons, there weren't enough supplies. He saw more men bandaged with strips of torn up old uniform than he did with fresh white linen. Rot spren clung to the bleeding like leeches, with not enough nobweed sap to chase them away.

The cots were occupied by those with the most serious injuries, or at the very least, those who  _ thought  _ they had the most serious injuries, and Tukks wasn't surprised to find Kal propped up against a crate in the corner. His injured leg was sticking out from beneath a scratchy looking blanket, and clearly hadn't been tended despite the lad looking even paler than before with blood loss. 

Tukks had to work very hard not to go and yell at someone. 

_ Very  _ hard. 

Instead, he went to go and scrounge up some more blankets. There were none spare in the main tent, so he went to the adjacent tent where lighteyes were tended. He also took antiseptic, a needle and thread, and several clean rolls of bandages - surgeons were useless most of the time, and it paid to pick up a few skills in field medicine after any length of time in the army. When a surgeon tried to stop him, he only had to bare his teeth a little to get the man to back off. 

He got back to Kal. The boy hadn't moved, and Tukks pretended not to see the tears cutting smooth tracks through the crem on his face. He focused on the task at hand, arranging the blankets into a makeshift pallet then pushing the boy to lie down, "You'll keel over, sitting up like that," he said, even if Kal didn't seem able to hear him, or able to care about hearing him. 

He turned the wound, setting his equipment to the side. Blood plastered the trouser leg to the skin, and a hasty bandage had been wrapped around it. Smart lad, making sure to keep bandages on him. Not every man did that. Tukks pulled it back, wincing at the sticky peeling sound. He heard Kal's breath hitch, but he didn't otherwise react. 

He sucked air through his teeth at the sight of the injury, "That's a nasty wound you've got there lad," he told him, watching as the deep laceration began to bleed sluggishly now that the clot under the bandage had been ripped away. Tukks would've liked to have left it there, but he knew the wound wouldn't have been clean, and it needed stitching, "Don't you worry, we'll get you fixed right up." 

He rinsed the wound out with water first - the chill of it sending shudders through Kal's body even with the extra blankets Tukks had heaped on top of him. If Tukks were his wife, he could've smoothed the kids hair from his face, told him it'd all be alright as she'd so often done for Tukks himself. If he were an ardent, he could've given some reassuring spiel about the almighty. If he were one of the men, he could've provided the quiet reassurance of camaraderie. Instead, he was the grim faced sergeant who'd forced his beautiful wife to write to far too many widows. It was who he'd had to become to get his men through all this alive, but that didn't mean he liked it. 

He applied the knobweed sap. It was probably too much, the surgeons always talked about how not to waste the stuff, but Tukks couldn't bring himself to care. It cleared the rotspren, sent the little buggers tumbling away in their fright. Like a shard bearer cleaving through a battlefield, unstoppable, no need for tactics because the side with the shards'd won before anyone's forces had even mustered.

Kal hadn't even twitched when the antiseptic was applied, and Tukks knew from bitter experience that it stung like damnation itself. He'd seen older, more experienced men than this kid with watery eyes after getting wounds cleaned. The blank silence wasn't a good sign. 

Later, he could deal with that later. Get the most visible injury seen to first. 

He took the needle and thread, clutched it with the same casual reverence as he would spear and shield. The wound gaped before him, beads of air yellowed fat walling a chasm of black clotted blood. The punch of the needle, and the edges clashed, a battle waged over the young soldier's skin, likely not the last. 

Clean bandages, and then it was done. Tukks wiped bloody fingers on his trousers, then used the back of his hand to clean the sweat beaded at his hairline. He was barely trained in field medicine - doing this would always be more frightening than any war. Hurting an enemy was one thing, but accidentally injuring one of your own was another. 

"All done now lad," Tukks said, "Told you I'd get you sorted." 

Still no response. Not that Tukks had expected one. 

A surgeon pronounced a man dead close enough for Tukks to smell it, and a woman let out the kind of awful, keening scream you only ever really heard in an infirmary. The world, dimmed out by focus, rushed back, and Tukks remembered that this was a place people came to die, not to get better. 

"Come on," he shifted, pulling one of the lads arms over his shoulders, "This is no place for us," the kid was limp still - dead weight. Tukks was as exhausted as any man after a battle and wasn't ashamed to admit it. 

"You there," he called out to a young woman. She didn't look bereaved, just slightly overwhelmed. Probably a new scribe, "Help me get this one back to the barracks."

She blinked owlishly, then pointed, questioningly to herself.

"Yes, you!" Tukks snapped. 

She rushed over and ducked under the lad's other arm, pulling it around her shoulders.

"On three," Tukks said. 

And, slow and staggering, they headed back to the barracks. 

* * *

Tukks took the lad to his own office - there was a cot set up for when he worked late and didn't want to disturb his wife, and Tukks felt like putting him in with the rest of the men in this state would be no better than throwing him at a fully grown whitespine. He needed peace and quiet to get proper rest.

It was often as not familiarity that broke the dam of shock. Tukks had expected it, and sent the young woman away when they crossed the threshold of the squat, soulcast building. Good thing he did as well. He could feel the boys shaking before he even got him settled, and by the time he got him on the cot, he was trembling with quiet, gasping sobs.

Tukks was heavy with fatigue, but he sat next to him on the cot anyway. Wrapped an arm round Kal's shoulder and rubbed small, soothing circles with his thumb, "You're alright now lad," he said with the soft tone of someone who knew his words were little more than empty placation, "I've got you."

The sobs came harder. Tukks knew too many officers that would tell the kid to pull himself together, he himself didn't have the heart to do anything other than pull him close into a proper hug and hold him tight until, eventually, the tide began to ebb. 

"You'll be alright," he said, words delicate as he was capable, "Sure it hurts like a highstorm stuck hovel right now, but it'll stop eventually. It always does." 

Kal shook his head, pulling away, too wrought to hide his puffy eyes, "No…" he mumbled, words slurred by a million things. He rubbed his grubby sleeve across his eyes. 

"What d'you mean 'no'?" Tukks wasn't that surprised by the response. Anger was common among the grieving, the kind that, fueled by pain and shame, burned brilliant and white. 

"I failed him." Shaky determination. Better than the emptiness. 

"No you didn't," Tukks knew he wouldn't believe him. 

A windspren seemed to have managed to sneak into the room, and Tukks was momentarily distracted until Kal caught his eye dead on, "I won't fail anyone else," he said, hoarsely.

Tukks felt chills run up his arms. 

"I'm going to get good," he uttered, and Tukks felt certain the lad wasn't talking to him anymore, "I'm going to get good enough that this won't ever happen again… I… I…" his voice cracked and he broke off into shaking breaths, unable to contain the enormity of what he'd sworn.

Tukks rested a hand on the lad's shoulder and pushed, gentle, until he acquiesced, lying down, "What you're going to do," Tukks said, voice a kinder version of the one he used to order around new recruits, "Is get your rest so I can take you to get checked over by a real surgeon in the morning." 

Tukks stood, and the kid stared at him nervily, "I'll clear off whilst you get some sleep." 

"Okay," Kal said. 

Tukks hesitated, hand resting hard on the door frame, "I… don't have to. If you want me to stay."

The kid flushed bright red, and Tukks cursed himself internally. He'd forgotten, momentarily, that he was the lad's commander, not his father. Even if he could probably use a father more than a commander right now anyway, "I'll send someone to check on you soon." he said quickly, attempting to cover his blunder. The boy relaxed minutely and nodded, and Tukks took that as his cue to leave him in peace.

* * *

It was properly late by the time Tukks got back to his own barracks, but as she always did after battle, Enlia had waited up for him. She sat reading by dull, flickering candle light, the kind Tukks was always telling her would ruin her eyes, feet curled up beneath her. 

Working as a military scribe, she'd have seen her own share of horrors today, even with the gentle curve of her belly beneath her dress. She still smiled when she saw him though, still held out a hand to beckon him to her. 

He went, sitting beside her on the bed. He pulled her into his chest and she went easily, curling into the cozy silence. They never asked each other about what they'd seen that day. If one volunteered the information that was one thing, but neither ever asked. 

Tukks gently rubbed her belly. He could almost imagine little hands reaching towards him from within her. He smiled, but it quickly faded, "En," he said quietly. She looked up, dark Alethi eyes seeming to look through him, "Will you promise me something?"

"Depends what it is," she said. 

"This kid of ours is never setting foot on a battlefield."

She watched him for a few moments, but she could always tell when he needed her to be serious, "Never." she agreed, and then, they fell asleep holding hands.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed, thanks for reading!
> 
> I've been working on this for a little while whenever Hearts & Minds has landed me with writers block. I'm self isolating rn because my parents both had positive covid tests, so whilst the next chapter of that is in the works, it could take a fair few days, thank you for being patient! Figured I'd get this little one shot out whilst that's in the works though :)


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